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Full Idea
According to Presentism, if we were to make an accurate list of all the things that exist (within the range of our most unrestricted quantifiers) there would not be a single non-present object on the list.
Gist of Idea
Presentism is the view that only present objects exist
Source
Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 1)
Book Ref
'Persistence: contemporary readings', ed/tr. Haslanger,S/|Kurtz,RM [MIT 2006], p.307
A Reaction
An immediate problem that needs examing is what constitutes an 'object'. It had better not range over time (like an journey). It would be hard to fit a description like 'the oldest man in England'.
| 13990 | Presentism is the view that only present objects exist [Markosian] |
| 13991 | Presentism has the problem that if Socrates ceases to exist, so do propositions about him [Markosian] |
| 13992 | Presentism says if objects don't exist now, we can't have attitudes to them or relations with them [Markosian] |
| 13994 | Presentism seems to entail that we cannot talk about other times [Markosian] |
| 13995 | Serious Presentism says things must exist to have relations and properties; Unrestricted version denies this [Markosian] |
| 14002 | Possible worlds must be abstract, because two qualitatively identical worlds are just one world [Markosian] |
| 13996 | Maybe Presentists can refer to the haecceity of a thing, after the thing itself disappears [Markosian] |
| 13997 | Maybe Presentists can paraphrase singular propositions about the past [Markosian] |
| 13998 | Objects in the past, like Socrates, are more like imaginary objects than like remote spatial objects [Markosian] |
| 13999 | People are mistaken when they think 'Socrates was a philosopher' says something [Markosian] |
| 14000 | 'Grabby' truth conditions first select their object, unlike 'searchy' truth conditions [Markosian] |
| 13993 | Special Relativity denies the absolute present which Presentism needs [Markosian] |
| 14001 | People who use science to make philosophical points don't realise how philosophical science is [Markosian] |